London's Soho district underwent a spectacular transformation between the late Victorian era and the end of the Second World War: its fin-de-siècle buildings and dark streets infamous for sex, crime, political disloyalty, and ethnic diversity became a center of culinary and cultural tourism servicing patrons of nearby shops and theaters. Indulgences for the privileged and the upwardly mobile edged a dangerous, transgressive space imagined to be "outside" the nation.Treating Soho as ...

From tabloid exposes of child prostitution to the grisly tales of Jack the Ripper, narratives of sexual danger pulsated through Victorian London. Expertly blending social history and cultural criticism, Judith Walkowitz shows how these narratives reveal the complex dramas of power, politics, and sexuality that were being played out in late nineteenth-century Britain, and how they influenced the language of politics, journalism, and fiction.Victorian London was a world where long-st...

This is an anthology of literature and graphic illustration that effectively defined a formative moment in the history of London.

This is an anthology of literature and graphic illustration that effectively defined a formative moment in the history of London.

This is an anthology of literature and graphic illustration that effectively defined a formative moment in the history of London.

This is an anthology of literature and graphic illustration that effectively defined a formative moment in the history of London.

This is an anthology of literature and graphic illustration that effectively defined a formative moment in the history of London.

This is an anthology of literature and graphic illustration that effectively defined a formative moment in the history of London.

1914 dawned with Britain at peace, albeit troubled by faultlines within and threats without: Ireland trembled on the brink of civil war; suffragette agitation was assuming an ever more violent hue; and suspicions of Germany's ambitions bred a paranoia that was expressed in a rash of 'invasion scare' literature.Then when shots rang out in Sara-jevo on 28 June, they set in train a tumble of diplomatic dominos that led to Britain declaring war on Germany.Nigel Jones depicts ev...

Women in Victorian England wore jewelry made from each other's hair and wrote poems celebrating decades of friendship. They pored over magazines that described the dangerous pleasures of corporal punishment. A few had sexual relationships with each other, exchanged rings and vows, willed each other property, and lived together in long-term partnerships described as marriages. But, as Sharon Marcus shows, these women were not seen as gender outlaws. Their desires were fanned by consumer cul...

Undertaker Violet Harper confronts the dire predictions of a fortuneteller in Queen Victoria’s court in this gripping tale by the author of Stolen Remains.Queen Victoria, still mourning her long-dead husband Prince Albert, has found solace in John Brown, an enigmatic palace servant who dabbles in the occult and keeps the grieving queen entertained with his tarot card readings. Undertaker Violet Harper is invited to attend one of Mr. Brown’s infamous readin...

Based on interviews with the convicted murderer, a journalist provides a true crime account of a father's sexual abuse and killing of his children.Neighbors were unaware of what went on behind the tightly closed doors of a house in Fresno, California—the home of an imposing, three-hundred-pound Marcus Wesson, his wife, children, nieces, and grandchildren. But on March 12, 2004, gunshots were heard inside the Wesson home, and police officers responding to what they b...